Hitherto, as gravure plate-making plants for manufacturing gravure cylinders (also referred to as “gravure plate-making rolls”), gravure plate-making plants described in Patent Documents 1 to 3 have been known.
As can be seen from the drawings of Patent Documents 1 to 3, a manufacturing line for a gravure plate-making roll has hitherto been constructed of an industrial robot and a stacker crane used in combination.
In the manufacturing line using the stacker crane, processing is performed in each of various processing units under a state in which an unprocessed plate-making roll is chucked by the stacker crane with use of a cassette-type roll chuck rotary transportation unit.
In the manufacturing line using the stacker crane, however, the unprocessed plate-making roll is sequentially transferred to the various processing units under the state in which the unprocessed plate-making roll is chucked with use of the cassette-type roll chuck rotary transportation unit. As a result, there is a problem in that a longer period of time is required due to the operation described above.
In addition, in the manufacturing line using the stacker crane, the unprocessed plate-making roll is sequentially transferred to the processing units under the state in which the unprocessed plate-making roll is chucked with use of the cassette-type roll chuck rotary transportation unit, and hence the various processing units need to be juxtaposed to one another. As a result, there is a problem in that a large installation space is required for the processing units.
Further, in the manufacturing line using the stacker crane, the unprocessed plate-making roll is sequentially transferred to the various processing units under the state in which the unprocessed plate-making roll is chucked with use of the cassette-type roll chuck rotary transportation unit. As a result, there is a problem in that dust may be generated.
In view of those problems, a fully automatic gravure plate-making processing system described in Patent Document 4 has been proposed and favorably accepted. The fully automatic gravure plate-making processing system has high degrees of freedom, and is capable of manufacturing a gravure plate-making roll more quickly than in the prior art, achieving space saving, performing an unattended operation even in the nighttime, flexibly customizing a manufacturing line, and satisfying various customer needs.
In this prior art fully automatic gravure plate-making processing system, a two-stage processing unit including, for example, a copper plating apparatus on a lower stage and a degreasing apparatus on an upper stage is disclosed as the processing unit. FIG. 8 is a side view for illustrating the processing unit used in the prior art fully automatic gravure plate-making processing system. In FIG. 8, a two-stage processing unit 200 being the prior art processing unit includes a copper plating apparatus 202 on a lower stage and a degreasing apparatus 204 on an upper stage. Reference symbol 206 represents a storage tank configured to store a plating solution, a degreasing solution, a resist removal solution, or other solutions. Lid portions 208 and 210 configured to close openings for loading and unloading unprocessed rolls are provided to the lower-stage processing apparatus and the upper-stage processing apparatus, respectively.
In the two-stage processing unit of the prior art fully automatic gravure plate-making processing system as described above, the lower-stage processing apparatus and the upper-stage processing apparatus have independent frames, and hence the two-stage processing unit is constructed by assembling each of the apparatus and mounting the upper-stage apparatus on the lower-stage apparatus. When the lower-stage processing apparatus and the upper-stage processing apparatus have independent frames, however, the processing unit cannot be standardized, and the production efficiency is poor as well.
When further flexible customization of the fully automatic gravure plate-making processing system is pursued but the sizes of the processing units are set variously, there is a problem of difficulty in the customization.